The year passed by peacefully for Marguerite and Gabriel. Or as peaceful a year for a high school teacher with an archangel husband could pass. Marguerite slowly became accustomed to her new job and life with Gabriel; neither was easy.
Marguerite found that American students were a lot harder to deal with than Chinese students. They were louder and messier, it took forever for them to pay attention and when they did it was transient. They never turned in their work on time, and they had an excuse for everything. She also found that they were brilliant, with creative streaks a mile wide, able to think outside of the box and then take that box and put it in the confines of a new shape. They constantly made hours of grading and worth the trouble.
Marguerite had also come to learn that Gabriel was the most annoying ass on the face of the earth; she definitely understood why he was a trickster. Gabriel loved to go through and organize her papers in weird ways, then explain in detail why his system was so much better, he constantly distracted her from her work, and couldn't sit still for more than an hour at a time. Marguerite was always finding gummy bears everywhere, always in various states of being; heads off, legs off, bitten in half with little gummy insides oozing slightly.
As much as his hectic habits annoyed her, they amused her. Especially on nights when Gabriel would pull her in his lap and charm the gummy bears to move. He'd made them do various things, from Macbeth to Soccer. Her personal favorite was the time he'd charmed the red and white gummy bears into a little civil war. The living room had been a disaster afterword, with gooey pieces of massacred gummy bears littering her carpet and walls. None of that mattered however, because she was laughing so hard that drawing in air hurt, and Gabriel was practically rolling in the gummy mess, their laughter mingling together chaotically. He always cleaned up the mess with a lazy snap of his fingers, but she knew it wasn't long before the war started again.
The year was drawing to a close and Christmas was fast approaching; Gabriel was more excited than she'd ever seen him in her life. He'd hardly given a second thought to the other holidays, but the festive bug had obviously crawled up his ass, because the second the stores started playing Christmas music he threw himself into the season with abandon. She let him do what he wanted, couldn't bring herself to try and tear down his childlike joy.
Marguerite stared out into the snowy landscape surrounding her house silently. The snow had come in torrents right after the start of the break. The temperatures had plummeted, and no matter what she did she could never get warm enough. Which posed no real problem, Gabriel was always around to hold her close. His inhuman warmth was a definite plus during the long winter months.
As Christmas approached Gabriel cranked up the cheer. He filled their home with decorations and presents. Marguerite had never seen so many Christmas related objects outside of a store before. They were all commercial images though. It seemed odd to her that an archangel would decorate so enthusiastically but leave out practically every religious symbol there was that related to the holiday. He scowled darkly at the manger she'd set up on the mantle of the fireplace, but she refused to take it down.
His reactions only fueled her curiosity. He hadn't had any problem with the other religious holidays between then and Thanksgiving; he even went to church with her every now and then. When it came to the religious aspects of Christmas however, he became bitter and quiet. She let it slide under the rug the entire season, didn't bring up her questions and tried to keep the religious references to a minimum. That all stopped the night Gabriel got angry with her for attending a Christmas pageant.
They stood on opposite ends of the room. Marguerite was perched on the couch, watching Gabriel stare sullenly into the fire. Marguerite had definitely reached the limit with crap she was going to put up with from her archangel, he hadn't given a reason for the distaste of the religious aspects, hadn't dropped a word of explanation.
"It doesn't make sense. Why do you hate the religious part of this so much Gabriel?"
He stared at her blankly; jaw clenched tightly, golden eyes blazing like the fire at his feet. "You all stole it from the ancients anyway. This was…"
"The winter solstice," Marguerite was having none of his sass, "it was celebrated by pagans because it was the shortest day of the year. To ancient civilizations it was the time when the year was reborn; they believed the sun gods were reborn around that time."
He opened his mouth to challenge her but she cut him off, "Not just sun gods. Basically every culture used this holiday. It was the Beiwe Festival to people in Norway as you well know Loki. It's the festival of extreme winter in China, Goru in Mali. I could go on for hours Gabriel." Brown eyes pinned him in place, "The Catholic church took the holiday and tagged Jesus' birth onto it, because it was a hell of a lot easier to convert people when holidays coincided. If we're being accurate Jesus was born late spring early summer. I know that Gabriel," he was staring at her mouth slightly ajar. He obviously hadn't expected her to know that much about the damn day.
"I want a real reason. Hell," she threw her hands up, "I'd expect you to be puffed up like a peacock. You were the one to tell Mary she was pregnant and you…"
"That's exactly it." He cut her off quietly and she stopped talking instantly. Gabriel looked upset golden eyes were downcast and she felt bad for snapping at him.
"Gabriel…" she walked over to him quietly and wrapped her arms around him snugly. He pulled her close; let his cheek rest against the top of her head while restless fingers tangled in her auburn curls.
"My Father sent me to tell Mary about the new baby," he didn't sound joyful or proud, "I was ecstatic. You have no idea, I was the youngest archangel at the time, and he sent me. Not Michael. I was going to spread the good news to this little human. I hadn't even been on earth since Abraham."
Gabriel picked her up carefully and walked them to the ugly purple couch. He sat and held her against him gently, strong hands tracing archaic symbols into the skin of her back gently. Marguerite let her head rest against his shoulder comfortably, and his cheek came to rest against her head lightly.
"It was the most wonderful feeling in the world. I was riding cloud nine," his voice brushed over her softly, "So I went and I found the girl. Mary was no woman Reita; she was a child, probably fourteen maybe a bit older. I watched her for a while, she talked with friends, helped her mother with cooking, listened to stories from her father. She was so normal. Excited too. She'd recently been engaged, she didn't know him well. Joseph though, he was pretty popular with the single ladies, he had a respectable occupation, good status in the temple, and he was a kind man. No woman could really ask for more at the time."
"That sounds nice." She felt his lips curve against her hair slightly, and was glad that she could at least gather a grin from him.
"I wouldn't call it that."
"Cynic."
"Realist," Gabriel brushed a soft kiss to the crown of her head, "She was really devout too. Loyal to my Father, subservient to his will yadda yadda the whole nine yards. I'm considered a fairly attractive archangel amongst the host. I'm the messenger so I was made a bit more attractive than many of my siblings." His tone changed subtly and Marguerite could hear the trace of bitterness, "I waited until she was alone. There was no need to announce it to the whole damn village after all."
Marguerite snuggled closer and tried to picture it. It was hard enough to imagine Gabriel as he really was in a house let alone a tiny little hut thing. She gave up when she realized she was only going to get a headache for her troubles.
"She was terrified. Absolutely fucking terrified. She cried and shook the entire time I spoke to her." Gabriel's jaw clenched tightly, "She said I was a monster, a demon. Tried to cast me out," a humorless laugh escaped him, "as if she could. My whole glorious mission was shattered under her terror. 'Be not afraid' I said and she was still afraid. When I finally got about to telling her the damn news she was even worse. Absolutely hated me; said that her future husband wouldn't understand and that she wasn't worthy. I just left."
Gabriel looked at her, his vibrant eyes dull, "No one's ever hated me before; I'd never ruined anyone with my Father's news. She didn't praise my Father until after I left, then she was perfectly content. I never delivered another message. Every time I thought about it all I could think about was this sobbing child who was pregnant with a child she'd never planned on."
Marguerite stayed silent for a few moments, tried to think of something to say that would make it better. She couldn't think of anything "I don't think you're terrifying."
"And you're very odd for it. I mean look at the bible, and the torah. Every time an angel shows up in their true form they instantly say 'Be not afraid'. That's not a coincidence Reita, angels are terrifying. We're not human; we're not cuddly little balls of feathers. Hell," his grip on her tightened painfully, "we're abominations compared to humans. All of you are put together so beautifully, and we're this terrifying mass of something. That's all we are and Mary made me realize it."
"I've never found you terrifying; if you were don't you think I would have been afraid?"
"No. The fact that you could see me was odd enough, touch me too? It was impossible. Mary saw me because of the child she carried, Abraham saw me because he had been touched by my Father. You? You had no reason to see anything besides my vessel, no direct contact with my Father, no miracle waiting to happen. Just a small child in a muddy nightgown."
"I'm afraid of other angels."
Gabriel looked at her sharply, "When have you directly seen another angel?"
"Zachariah. I saw him and I was terrified. He is an abomination, I was physically ill just looking at his real self. I knew right away that he was bad."
"Yet you stayed…"
"It was flooding outside, I thought I was being paranoid," she looked up at him and brushed his hair out of his eyes tenderly, "I'd only come into contact with you. I didn't know what he was. He looked so…different."
"Seraphim look different than archangels. Cherubim are similar to the Seraphim but still different. It was how we marked the differences between ranks."
"So Balthazar?"
"My brother is a Seraph. You've never looked on his true form?"
"I was afraid to."
Gabriel gave her a goofy smile and wound his fingers into her curls, "I thought my little human wasn't afraid of anything."
"When I look at something," she frowned a bit, "I never forget it. I don't want to see Balthazar and be too terrified by what I see to be around him anymore. I haven't looked at anything but you since Zachariah. I haven't scanned for angels, or demons or anything. I just don't look."
"Maybe it's for the best."
Gabriel kissed her softly, trailed his lips over hers with aching tenderness. He pulled her close once again and kissed the top of her head. "On the night you were born I was wandering Siberia…"
Marguerite looked at him and frowned, trying to figure out where his words were coming from.
"I was wandering alone in the snow, when Balthazar found me. I hadn't seen him for hundreds of years, but it seemed like days. He was angry that I wandered with no purpose. I wasn't serving as a god, I didn't help the host, and I was basically a ball of worthless intent."
"You're not worthless Gabriel."
He shushed her gently, "I was then. Balthazar was having none of it though, and he said the oddest thing to me that night, he told me 'One day you're going to find your will to live, and you're going to want to have better tales to share with that will than endless nights of snow and ice'." Gabriel laughed softly, "I had no idea what the hell he meant, but it definitely got me thinking. So I started living as a trickster. I played pranks and punished those who deserved it."
"How do you know it was the night I was born?"
"I remembered the date," he kissed her gently, "Then one night, five years after he told me that, I'm walking around this little cornfield of a state, looking for some sucker to play. I'm wandering aimlessly, and suddenly I see this little thing playing in the rain. She'd got this teddy bear propped up against a tree like a guardian," Gabriel watched her intently as he spoke, "and she's wearing his little nightgown that is completely soaked. Her little curls were drenched, but she was so happy because she had all this mud to play with."
Marguerite listened intently, hanging on to every word that left his lips, "I walked toward her and she saw me. This little human child saw me. She didn't run from me just gazed at me, and then she touched me and I was so overwhelmed. No one had touched me in years. I forced myself into my vessel, and this little girl had the most adult eyes in her innocent little face," his thumb brushed her cheek gently, "and for some reason I thought of Mary, this woman who was really no more than a child, and I thought about how different the two children were. Both could see me, but one was terrified with no reason to be, and one was calm when there was reason to be terrified," he laughed softly, "the little girl in the blue nightgown had nothing protecting her from my wrath. No heavenly intent, no child waiting to be born."
Gabriel pulled her closer a light seemed to emanate from him, "But these adult eyes were too soon. This child was no were near womanhood, and she expressed the most heartbreaking thing in the simplest of ways. All I could tell her was that adults did silly things. I was drawn to her because there was absolutely no one in the world to protect her, my Father would not intervene on her behalf, she had no village to watch her, her parents were fighting. She depended only on a stuffed bear." His eyes roamed to a tattered teddy that sat on the mantle, "This little human accepted me without hesitation, let me hold her in my arms, fell asleep on me. I knew at that moment that there was nothing I wouldn't do for this child, nothing I wouldn't protect her from. I would end the world if it was her will."
Marguerite couldn't speak, couldn't form words. To be told that you were someone's drive to really live. How could you possibly respond to that? Marguerite pulled him close, clung to him with all her strength, and wondered what she would ever do without him near her. She decided that she was lucky she'd never have to find out, because after all who could possibly take Gabriel away from her?